Old, Weak and a Loser: Crack User's Image Falls

By GINA KOLATA

Published: July 23, 1990

Crack has begun to get a bad name among a growing number of young people in New York City's poorest neighborhoods, according to some teen-agers, police officers and researchers who work on the streets. Rather than a challenge, something to test a teen-ager's mettle, they say, the smokable form of cocaine is gaining a reputation as a drug ''for losers.''

These young people tell how their families, friends and neighbors have been broken by the drug, and, along with several crack addicts and police officers, they tell of a violent backlash, in which groups of teen-agers and even younger children have set upon crack addicts and beaten them up or pelted them with sticks or stones.

One teen-ager who says he has turned to violence is 18-year-old Luis Solla, who lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and works as a lifeguard at a fitness center. His 21-year-old brother, he says, is a crack addict and dealer who was thrown out of the house at 17 and into prison at 19. His sister, who is 19, was also a crack addict. She abandoned her baby, and ran off to live with her crack-dealing boyfriend in Connecticut.

'We Don't Do Crack'

''I don't want to be like some people out here,'' Mr. Solla said. ''They lose their homes because they're on it. I don't want to get involved with that.''

Every day, he says, he is reminded of crack's toll. ''All my friends, we don't do crack because we look at the older guys on the block,'' he said. ''They're all bad crackheads. I look at them and I see what they're doing, and I don't want to be like that.'' He and his friends, he added, fight with crack users. ''We beat them up. We're trying to get them out of the neighborhood.''

These reports of changing attitudes are largely anecdotal, and law-enforcement officials say they have no hard evidence of major changes in patterns of drug use. But for researchers who work on the streets of New York, they offer hope that five years after the arrival of crack, social pressures and the daily sights of devastation are turning some young people away from the drug. Along with experts at drug-treatment centers, they say that the addict population seems to be getting older, a sign, they say, that the epidemic may be starting to wane.

''I'm seeing that there is a movement away from crack,'' said Dr. Terry Williams, a sociologist at the City University of New York who lives in East Harlem and has been studying the epidemic there, ''Right now, it's certainly clear that that's happening at the street level.''

Dr. Ansley Hamid, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who works in Williamsburg and other areas of Brooklyn, agrees. ''Young people are ridiculing crackheads in their neighborhoods, even beating them up, and are abstaining from drugs themselves, other than a little marijuana and beer,'' he said.

'They're Like Fiends'

On the streets of Williamsburg, one of Mr. Solla's friends, 16-year-old Joseph Drexler, looks around and sees two uncles and an aunt who are homeless crack addicts. ''I don't even consider them family,'' he said.

Mr. Drexler has also seen friends and acquaintances ruined by the drug. ''I have a few friends; they're older than me but I grew up with them all my life,'' he said. ''They started using crack a long time ago. They're crackheads. They live on my block and they rob all the time; they rob off their best friends, their families. They're like fiends. They'll do anything to get the money. We don't want them on our block.''

On a recent afternoon, a skeletal young woman in a red tank top and dirty white pants huddled on a rubble-strewn crack corner in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn and told of a harrowing experience at the hands of a gang of children.

The woman - who, fearing reprisal, spoke on the condition that her name not be used - said she was 25 and began smoking cocaine eight years ago, when it was sold as a powder and she had to cook it up into a smokable form. Now she prostitutes herself and sells crack to support her habit.

Children's Taunts, and Sticks

She is humiliated, she says, by the children's taunts - ''crackhead,'' ''thirsty crackhead.'' ''Do you know how much that hurts?'' she asked, ''to have to hear that from a little 7-year-old, 12-year-old kid?''

Several months ago, a gang of boys armed with sticks took her by surprise while she was smoking crack.

''Me and my friend, we're smoking, you know,'' she said. ''They came up on me, about six, seven of them. Someone smashed me from the back and I turned around. There was a little kid on me. He just started hitting me. I'm on the ground.''

The boys backed her up against a garage door. ''They cracked my head. They wanted to burn my pants - on me. I had pants on and they wanted to burn them.'' Her neighbors turned away. ''That block was full of more people - dealers, crackheads, even the ones that just hang around. My people. My so-called people. Nobody did nothing. Everybody just walked away. I was the only one there, with the little kids beating up on me.''

Vickie R., a 25-year-old prostitute and crack addict, has also been attacked by the gangs.

''A month ago, I was coming down the block and I was going to cop and my stem fell out of my purse,'' she said, referring to her crack pipe. ''I picked it up and put it in my purse because I didn't want the kids to see it, but one of the little kids, he seen it. So he come up and he says, 'Ah, look, there goes a crackhead.' Then another one come by on a bike and throws a bottle at me. He tells me, 'You crackheads watch. I'm going to get rid of you.' ''

Eventually, a group of her friends chased the boys away. ''But it was at that point, you know the tension.''

Not only are crack addicts fair game, Vickie said; anyone who looks like an addict is at risk.

''Them kids are disgusted with people that do crack,'' she said. ''Anybody that's skinny and look like a crackhead, they go off. They don't want no crackheads around them. Instead of the parents being the ones to tell the crackheads, 'We don't want you smoking on the block,' it's the little kids.''

Officer Sees Attitudes Change

Police Officer C. Bullock, a fresh-faced 25-year-old who works on the streets of Washington Heights, said he had seen women who are crack addicts and, usually, prostitutes, beaten up by young people. ''They're easy prey,'' he explained, and because of their own criminal activity, are unlikely to report the attacks.

But Officer Bullock said he had definitely seen a change in attitudes about crack, at least in Washington Heights.

''Most kids are against it,'' he said, explaining that they had become only too aware of how dangerous the drug is. ''In this neighborhood, they see it, they hear it, they live it. A lot of people say they don't want those scaly crackheads on the block. They feel they're an eyesore.''

Lieut. Joseph McNulty, who coordinates a police program to teach about drugs in the schools, said the officers who conducted the eight-week courses were also seeing young people turning away from crack. ''We notice that there is a changing attitude,'' Lieutenant McNulty said. Not only are the users older, he said, but fewer teen-agers seem to be starting to use drugs. ''We haven't had an up-to-date survey to verify this, but we feel it anyway,'' he added.

Crack Addicts Are Older

''There is most definitely a strong awareness in the youngest generation that crack is a loser's drug,'' said Dr. Philippe Bourgois, an ethnographer from San Francisco State University who lives in East Harlem and works in its neighborhoods. ''Now, 'thirsty crackhead' is the ultimate insult,'' referring to crack users' insatiable appetite for the drug.

Social scientists and drug-treatment experts say they, too, are seeing an aging of the addict population. And while that is partly because those who became addicted at the start of the epidemic are getting older, they believe that it also suggests that fewer young people are starting to use crack.

Dr. Williams has been studying the cocaine epidemic since the early 1980's, before crack came on the scene, and he routinely asks addicts how old they are. ''The average crack addict is now in the mid- to late 20's,'' Dr. Williams said. ''At the beginning of the epidemic, the average age was 18.''

Dr. Hamid and Dr. Richard Curtis, a colleague at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said they had not spoken to any addicts recently who started using crack in the last year; the vast majority of addicts they meet began using crack several years ago.

Recently, Dr. Hamid said, he visited a Bushwick crack house where prostitutes went to exchange sex for the drug. ''All these girls were coming out of the woodwork, looking like the brides of Dracula,'' he said. ''Not a single one of them had started using crack later than 1984 or 1985.''

At Phoenix House, not only has the average age of crack addicts seeking treatment risen; there has been a proportionate decrease in teen-age applicants. This year, 20 percent of the addicts applying for treatment are age 16 to 19, said Stephen Dnistrian, a spokesman. Last year, 33 percent were in that age group.

Jose R., a stocky 21-year-old heroin addict whose track marks are partly hidden by the ears of a Playboy bunny tattooed on his arm, says he can measure the two years he just spent in prison by the changes he now sees in his Bushwick neighborhood.

Jose sells heroin, a drug that is being used by crack addicts to ameliorate their high.

''I came back and I said, 'Wow, what happened here?' '' said Jose, who was released in February after serving a sentence for a drug-related crime. ''I'm not seeing new people starting with crack. People that have never done it, they're really afraid. The AIDS virus, the way they see people becoming. It destroys you, you know. So people are afraid. People who have never done it are afraid to.

''A few years ago, every teen-ager would try crack. But most of the teen-agers nowadays, once they come around here and see this, they don't want none of it.''

Photos: Vickie R., a 25-year-old prostitute and crack addict in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, says she was almost beaten by a group of youths about a month ago. ''You crackheads watch,'' one of the youths shouted out to her. ''I'm going to get rid of you.''; ''All my friends, we don't do crack because we look at the older guys on the block,'' said Louis Solla, center, who lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, ''I don't want to be like that.'' With him are Michael Camacho, left, and Joseph Drexler. Mr. Solla says he and his friends beat up crack dealers in an attempt to rid the neighborhood of them. (Photographs by Angel Franco/The New York Times) (pg. B4)